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The Hampton Bulletin December. 1913 Vol. 9 No. 6 

PkACricAL TRAINING IN 
NEGRO RURAL SCHOOLS 



THE HAMPTON NORMAL AND 
AGRICULTURAL INSTITUTE 




1913 



Issued in nine numbers by The Hampton Normal and Agricultural 
Institute, Hampton, Virginia 



Entered as second-class matter March 31, 1905, at the Post Office 
at Hampton, Virginia, under the Act of July 1 6, 1 894 






PRACTICAL TRAINING IN NEGRO 
• RURAL SCHOOLS* 

BY JACKSON DAVIS 

Supervisor of Rural Elementary Schools in Virginia 

A few efforts had been made here and there throughout the 
South, notably by Hampton Institute in Gloucester County, 
Virginia, to tie up the work of the country school to the life of 
the home and the farm, but it was not until the establishment of 
the Jeanes Fund for Negro Rural Schools that a general effort 
was made in this direction. In Henrico County, Virginia, in the 
fall of 1933, following a conference of the school officials of the 
county with agents of the Jeanes Fund, a supervising industrial 
teacher was employed and put to work in all of the colored schools 
of the county. The pioneer work of Virginia Randolph in over- 
coming the indifference of her own people, organizing improve- 
ment leagues at each school, introducing simple forms of indus- 
trial work, and in the enlistment of the active interest of the 
white people in these efforts for improvement in practical ways, 
met with such success that a new spirit was soon ablaze in each 
colored community, and the schools were transformed in appear- 
ance and in the general character of their work. Other counties 
all over the South have taken up this work through the aid of the 
Jeanes Fund and pronounced it good. 

The general plan, so successful in its early demonstration, 
has continued to grow and meet with approval. It has developed 
initiative among the colored rural people; and it has tied their inter- 
ests together in the school for a better neighborhood. The moral 
effect has been noticed by the white people around them, and 
their support of this movement has been hearty, I asked a school 
trustee, in a county where this work and farm-demonstration 
work had been going on together for several years, if he could 
notice any change taking place among the colored people of the 
county. He replied that a decided improvement was going on, 
that they were working more industriously, and taking more 
interest in their homes, their farms, and their schools. They 
were so much interested in better schools that they contributed 

*A paper read before the meeting of the Southern Educational Association, Nashville, Tennessee, 
October 30— November 1, 1913 




THE OLD HOME OF A NEGRO DEMONSTRATOR 

from one-fourth to one-half the cost of new colored schoolhouses 
that had been built. He added that crime was decreasing and 
bank deposits increasing. 

Supervising industrial teachers were employed in something 
like one hundred and thirty counties in the Southern states last 
session. This work has been made possible in most cases by the 
Jeanes Fund, but the counties, as they see the splendid results, are 
putting up more money from local funds for the support of the 
work, and in some counties the teacher's salary is paid entirely 
from local school funds. To give a concise idea of the definite 
improvements brought about by supervision and industrial training. 



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THIS NEGRO DEMONSTRATOR'S NEW HOME (ENTIRELY FREE FROM DEBT) 
Note the old home in the rear. 



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THE OLD SCHOOLHOUSE AT FELDEN, PRINCE EDWARD COUNTY 

I give the following summary of the work in Virginia : 

For the session 1912-13, 23 supervising industrial teachers 
worked in the colored schools of 25 counties. Of the 591 Negro 
schools in these counties, 417 were visited regularly, and a total 
of 2853 visits were made by the 23 supervising industrial teachers. 
One hundred and eighty-nine schools extended the term an aver- 
age of one month. Twenty new buildings were erected costing 
$23,808, and 15 buildings were enlarged at a cost of $2212.09. 
Forty-six buildings were painted and 81 whitewashed, and' 102 
sanitary outhouses were built. Three hundred and seventeen 




THE NEW GRADED SCHOOL AT P^ELDEN 




"YOU DONE TURN' DE KIVERS DOWN AND WOKE US UP ! " 

— ' ' Uncle ' ' Washington Baylor 

schools used individual drinking cups. The 428 improvement leagues 
raised in cash for new buildings, extending terms, equipment, and 
improvements, $22,655.80. This does not include labor or mate- 
rials given. The whole cost of the salaries and expenses of the 
supervising teachers was less than $10,000.00, so that as a result 
of their efforts they have brought into the school funds of the 
state more than twice the amount expended. It is impossible to 
estimate the value of this supervision as expressed in the practi- 
cal nature of the school work and the spirit of co-operation among 
all classes, which has been brought about in these counties. 







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PATRONS VISITING THE BRUNSWICK COUNTY EXHIBIT 
Archdeacon Russell, Principal of St. Paul's School, stands at the left of center. 




WELCOMING VISITORS ON PATRONS' DAY, ELIZABETH CITY COUNTY 

Statistics I know are dull, but back of these figures there is 
to me a thrilling story of the efforts of people long neglected, now- 
responding splendidly out of their limited means to build better 
schools for their children, to teach them to be industrious, honest, 
and useful citizens in the counties where they now live. 

In sending out trained colored teachers to supervise the rural 
schools we are putting the best leadership of the Negro race to 
work in the task of bringing about better training, better farm- 
ing, better living among the Negroes in the country districts. 
We must not forget that the old order is passing, and that the 




PLAYING GAMES AT RECESS AT THE POLE ROAD SCHOOL, HENRICO 



contact between the best classes of the two races, as typified in 
the kindly relations with the faithful servants in the Southern 
home, is growing less. The colored people are steadily being seg- 
regated, and the danger is that the best white people will not 
know the best colored people. Large areas in almost every South- 
ern county are occupied here and there by Negroes. They do 
not come in close contact with the whites, but are living 
more and more to themselves. It is our peculiar task, therefore, 
to see that these Negroes are given the right leadership in order 
that they may build up among themselves a wholesome and satis- 
fying civilization. 

The school is almost the only point where conscious effort is 
made by the white people to influence and develop the Negro race, 
and here is a great opportunity for constructive work, as indeed 
the supervising teachers are showing. In organizing the school 
improvement leagues they are bringing the older colored people 
together in the interest of better things, and are calling forth 
the spirit of self-help which is indispensable to their progress. 

In the second place, the efforts of the colored people to help 
themselves are meeting with a more generous response from the 
school boards, and decent schoolhouses are replacing the neglected 
shanties that have done service for so many years. Thus in Vir- 
ginia last year 41 colored rural graded schools received from the 
State Graded School Fund $6310.00 for maintenance ; 24 of these, 
more than half, were built during the past year, so this move- 
ment has only just begun. No school is aided that is not prop- 
erly lighted, heated, and ventilated, and provided with sanitary 
outhouses. To meet these requirements, in order to secure the 
graded schools, the Negroes have contributed generously. Most 
of the $22,655.00 which they raised went into the construction of 
these buildings. 

For example, in one of the poorer counties of Virginia, which 
had had an industrial teacher for two years, the school leagues 
became aroused with the purpose of getting modern schoolhouses. 
I drove with the county superintendent in stormy weather over 
bad roads to five of these meetings in the different colored settle- 
ments of the county. One of these meetings was at a place called 
Dawn. The day was very stormy, but a large crowd gathered to 
meet us. The building here was an old one-room school, cut into 
two rooms by a partition. It could accommodate properly not more 
than 25 children, but the two teachers had an enrollment of 70, 
and there were 135 children in the neighborhood who ought to 
have been in school. The furniture consisted of crude, home-made 
benches, a few pictures, a battered and torn map, a case for mate- 
rials, and a hornet's nest on the ceiling. The redeeming qualities 
of the school were cleanliness and the fine spirit of the teachers. 



The people are now building a four-room schoolhouse, modern 
and sanitary, and they are paying fully three-fourths of its cost. 
The Negroes here are not rich, but they own their land and have 
a permanent interest in the neighborhood. Some gave trees 
which they took to the sawmill and had cut into the necessary 
lumber ; some gave so many days' labor on the building, under 
the direction of the carpenter in charge ; others contributed in 
cash. The local school board agrees to provide the necessary 
teachers when the building is finished, and the state will give 
to this school $200 a year for maintenance from the Graded School 
Fund. Truly a better day is breaking at Dawn ! 

At another meeting, where the school was maintained in a 
room rented from some secret order, we presented the needs to 
the colored people and told them we would provide another teacher 
if they would erect the schoolhouse. They readily accepted this 
proposition and each, man told what he would do. As each spoke 
the turn came to old ' ' Uncle ' ' Washington Baylor, some eighty 
years of age, who arose with all the dignity of the older genera- 
tion to which he belongs and, in his own peculiar words and man- 
ner, expressed his pleasure at living to see such a glad day for his 
people. He finally turned to the superintendent and said, ' ' Mr. 
Washington, you has done turn' de kivers down and woke us 
up. " The whole scene put me in mind of the thanksgiving of 
St. Simeon of old, ' ' Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart 
in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation. " 

Such scenes as this have become a common experience with 
me, as I have gone through the counties with the superintend- 
ents, after the industrial teachers have made the work of the 
schools practical and brought about the desire for definite im- 
provement among the colored people. 

The establishment of graded schools in this co-operative way 
in the heart of remote colored settlements will soon make pos- 
sible a better supply of colored teachers. The plan which some 
counties in Mississippi and Louisiana are already trying, making 
such a central school a county training school for teachers, is one 
which offers immediate help in this emergency, and this plan is 
likely to spread. 

To show the lack of training among the teachers of Negro 
rural schools, it will suffice to give a few figures from Virginia for 
the session of 1911-12. Of the 2083 colored teachers in country 
schools, only 15 per cent had had any professional training ; 32 
per cent held the third-grade or emergency certificate, which, as 
its name implies, is not a certificate at all but merely a permit to 
teach until a teacher with a certificate can be secured. The state 
spent that year on the latter class of untrained teachers, 
$71,165.34. Of course there are notable exceptions among them ; 




A ONE-ROOM NEGRO SCHOOLHOUSE WITH WORK-ROOM ATTACHED, 
CHARLES CITY COUNTY 

some of them are good and are doing much to help their people, 
but it is unnecessary to add that a great deal of this money, if 
not actually wasted, brought the state a very small return. 

One of the most promising developments in Negro education 
has been the co-operation of the supervising industrial teacher 
with the farm-demonstration agent, in working during the sum- 
mer months with clubs of girls who make home gardens and can 
their vegetables and fruits for winter use. This feature of the 
work was begun in Virginia two years ago in four counties. During 




THE JETER SCHOOL, HENRICO COUNTY 

This school won the prize for the best woodwork at the exhibit, 
window curtains and curved walk. 



Note the 




A COOKING CLASS AT THE HENRICO COUNTY INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL 

the past summer it was carried on in fourteen. Under this 
plan the industrial teachers are employed for the entire twelve 
months. At the close of the school term they organize garden 
clubs among the larger girls. They visit them in their homes, 
meet them in groups, give them practical instruction for their 
gardens, and teach canning, cooking, and sewing in the homes. 
The teachers are in great demand during the summer months, 
not only among the girls, but among their mothers as well, for they 
too, have been eager to learn the ** government way " of canning 
vegetables. Many of them have told me they never heard before 
of canning anything except tomatoes. Most of the colored homes 




A SEWING LESSON IN THE OAK GROVE SCHOOL, BRUNSWICK COUNTY 




A PRIZE GARDEN 



have a garden of some sort, but it lasts only during midsummer 
and it is subject at all times to the depredations of chickens and 
cows. It meant a great deal, therefore, for the teachers to get 
these girls and their mothers to take the home garden seriously, 
to have them plant a late fall garden, as well as one for early 
spring and midsummer, and to have them either fence it or put it 
in some other way out of reach of chickens and cows. 

It is inspiring to visit these gardens and note the wonderful 
improvements which have been made ; to see the hope and encour- 
agement on the faces of the girls when they have learned to do 
old work in a new way and found out that it pays ; and to notice 




RUBY AND RUTH BANKS — PRIZE WINNERS FOR THE BEST KEPT GARDEN IN 

CAROLINE COUNTY 




CAROLINE COUNTY GARDEN-CLUB MEMBERS 

the pride and appreciation of the mothers when they see what 
their children have done, and when they reahze also that they 
will have a better living for the family during the winter months. 
Most of the clubs meet in a convenient home once a week. This 
home certainly gets for this once a good cleaning and every- 
thing is made to appear at its best. While the vegetables are 
growing, lessons in cooking, sewing, and housecleaning are given. 
I ha,ve seen splendid results of the cooking which some of 
these girls did at , the end of their summer training. In one 
county the cooking club prepared a luncheon for the County Board 




CHESTERFIELD CANNING CLUB EXHIBIT 
This Club put up 1700 jars 




PART OP THE HENRICO COUNTY EXHIBIT 

of Supervisors who were having an all-day session in the court- 
house near-by. It is scarcely necessary to add that these men 
have been warmly in favor of this new type of education ever 
since! In many such ways the industrial teachers are wisely 
bringing the results of their work to the observation of the best 
white people in their neighborhood. Each county has an exhibit 
of cooking, canning, sewing, and industrial work done during the 
year, and always a special time is arranged for the white people to 
inspect the exhibit ; they always come and have words of praise 
and encouragement for the efforts of their colored neighbors. 

I appeared before a county-school board last winter to ask for 
an appropriation to employ a supervising industrial teacher to do 
work, not only during the school term, but for canning and 




NORFOLK COUNTY EXHIBIT 




CHESTERFIELD COUNTY EXHIBIT 

garden work, during the summer. I did not know what sort of an 
impression I would make or what prejudices I would encounter, 
but when I told of the canning work and how it meant better 
homes and better living among the colored people, one of the 
trustees said that he employed a large number of Negroes and 
that he was heartily in favor of this work and any other which 
would mean better living for them in their homes. He said he 
did not care to employ the kind of hands that live out of the coun- 
try store on gingersnaps and sardines. He said that the men who 
had good homes and hved well, were worth infinitely more to 
him. The Board readily made the appropriation and the work 
has been introduced in that county. 

In this connection, a country merchant stopped the white 
canning-club worker in one of our counties and said : ' ' No, I do 




NORTHAMPTON COUNTY EXHIBIT 



H 

not wantlto buy any more canned goods. You have broken up 
my trade entirely. I still have on hand a lot of canned goods I 
got from the factory last year. I cannot even sell them to 
Negroes, for they tell me they have got a teacher and are learning 
to do this work themselves. " If this could be the experience of 
all the country merchants, the South would be much better off, 
and so would the merchants, for if people do not have to buy can- 
ned goods they have more money with which to buy other things. 

The industrial teacher literally goes about doing good, and her 
opportunity is as great as her ability. In the summer work they 
are touching directly the homes of the people and bringing about 
changes which are having a far-reaching effect for better living. 
I know of instances where whole families have been saved from 
tuberculosis by the faithful, persistent efforts of the teachers in 
showing the mother the necessary precautions for the prevention 
of infection when one member of the family had the disease. 
Most of the homes in which they work are whitewashed, and this 
has a wonderful effect both for sanitation and cleanhness. They 
are also teaching the people to screen against flies and mosqui- 
toes, and they are gradually getting better stoves and utensils in 
their kitchens. As their wants increase, their labor must be 
steadier and more intelligent so that they can supply these wants. 

I have observed that where the superintendents have employed 
supervising industrial teachers and made the Negro schools use- 
ful in their neighborhoods, prejudice is giving way to a spirit of 
kindly interest and co-operation between the two races ; and inva- 
riably those counties that have the best Negro schools have also 
the best white schools. 

General Armstrong, who founded Hampton Institute, recog- 
nized the value of labor as a force in building character, and in 
many ways he prepared the way for the general trend in educa- 
tion today away from the abstract to the real. Work may be sim- 
ply drudgery, but it can be made intelligent, and it can be infused 
with ideals so that it becomes not only pleasant but a powerful 
moral force. Especially is this true of farm life. No one can 
doubt this who has visited Negro farmers who, by demonstra- 
tion methods, are now making two and three times the crops with 
less labor than formerly on their land, and who, as a result of this 
increased prosperity, are putting permanent improvements upon 
their farms, building better homes, and taking part in every 
movement for the improvement of the neighborhood. Work that 
had formerly been drudgery, yielding the barest living, now 
affords them an opportunity for economic independence. It has 
become the avenue leading to spiritual and moral development. 
Those farmers who have been waked up to better farming have 
undergone really a spiritual change. They are more ready to help 



15 

each other. The spirit of co-operation has replaced the spirit of 
trying to prosper at the expense of one's neighbor. The change 
which must come over the South wherever this work has been 
started will bring new moral forces into play for the improvement 
of the life of all our people. 

Negroes, either as tenants, owners, or laborers, cultivate 
farms in the South with an area of 100,000,000 acres. This is an 
area equal to four times that of the State of Virginia. Much of 
this land, as we know, is cultivated in the very poorest fashion. 
Much of it is waste and much of it has been worn out, so that it is 
below the level of profitable cultivation. We shall have a one- 
sided civilization as long as we have twentieth century methods 
in our cities, and eighteenth century methods on our farms. We 
cannot afford to neglect any class of our people, for neglect breeds 
ignorance, waste, and crime. Suppression is a policy that works 
both ways. If we deny the Negro the training which he needs to 
make a better citizen and a better man and a better farmer, we 
suppress our rural life and hold down our average to a lower level, 
and we continue to have him wear out the soil, which is our great- 
est natural wealth. Training of the right kind that will replace 
obsolete methods with intelligent methods, that will replace 
insanitary cabins with respectable homes, neglected shacks with 
attractive schoolhouses, a superstitious religion with an intelli- 
gent work for the coming of the Kingdom of God on earth— this 
is the rural civilization which some think must be wrought as by 
a miracle, but which nevertheless seems to be slowly evolving as 
a result of the new type of education which I have attempted to 
describe. 



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